


shots

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Star Wars (Marvel Comics), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Blushing, Chance Meetings, Character Study, F/F, Stream of Consciousness, Unresolved Romantic Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-14
Updated: 2018-02-14
Packaged: 2019-03-17 00:59:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13648101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: She allows herself one single, terrifying moment of imagining them being together, working side-by-side, the Empire and Trip’s gang no obstacle between them.





	shots

**Author's Note:**

  * For [weakinteraction](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weakinteraction/gifts).



Aphra holds Tolvan at the end of a blaster and it’s not the first time this has happened. It’s not even the third or fifth or tenth. They’ve run into each other so often, on so many planets, that Aphra has stopped keeping track all together. It’s easier this way, to let it be a surprise, to not catalogue it the way she would catalogue a dig site. Tolvan isn’t a specimen to be analyzed, labeled, and tucked into a dusty corner of a museum that some curator won’t care enough about. No, Tolvan is worth more than that to Aphra now and she’s so. Very. Tired. Of meeting this way.

“We should really stop meeting this way,” Aphra says and it’s a quip that hides a shade too much truth. Tolvan’s not an archaeologist, but she is an investigator and that’s near enough to the same thing, isn’t it? “It really puts a damper on my day.”

The wind blows through Tolvan’s hair, ruffling the short, bluntly cut of it across her forehead. Her palms itch to smooth her hands through the gray-white strands. They would be so soft between her fingers, she just knows it. The two opposing corners of her mind duke it out, place and take back bets as they decide just how dead they’d end up if Aphra did so now. Tolvan doesn’t say anything. She’s always so deliberate when she’s not forced to run about around in the wake of Aphra’s many and varied mishaps. How this always happened to them is entirely beyond her and as much as she hates it, she can’t say she regrets these moments even if she’d prefer them to happen any other way.

It would be so much easier if she did regret them; she’d try so much harder to avoid these encounters altogether if there were any disincentives.

Sure, Tolvan could haul her back to Darth Vader and hand her to him on a platter, but it might be worth it, might it not, if Tolvan defeated her fair and square?

No, no. Of course not. That’s the… attraction talking. Aphra definitely doesn’t want to go back to Vader and if the choice is Tolvan and herself, she will always choose herself. It’s just—harder is all. Tolvan is so very cute and she’s got that furrow between her eyebrows now—she’s confused or mad or both, both probably. Aphra’s good at confusing and pissing people off simultaneously. “Have you ever considered finding me in a cantina? I’d buy you a drink if you did. That would be nice, wouldn’t it?”

That’s—not what she means to say and oh, how she that traitorous flush that creeps up her neck and floods across her cheeks and exposes so much more of her than she’s interested in sharing. Love is a weakness; Sana taught her that. And her voice has pitched itself even higher than she wants it to be, that’s just great. _Well done, Aphra. Do you want your crush to be visible from space?_

“A cantina,” Tolvan says, dubious, because she doesn’t trust Aphra, Aphra knows that. She knows it the same way she knows Tolvan won’t pull her blaster, that the chances of Tolvan bringing her back to Vader are slim, that they’ll trade barbs and verbal cannon fire until time runs out and fate pulls them apart again. This time, she thinks it’ll be Trip because there’s no way there are other Imperials in this system besides Tolvan. She’s sure of it. She’d bet her life—and is, in a way, right at this moment—on that very fact.

So it’ll be her own crew mucking this up for her and as the minutes count down, she knows she should say something else, something more profound or more concrete than let’s grab drinks. There would only be so many chances before they run out and Aphra wouldn’t be able to say anything else, let alone ask her out in the least sincere manner possible. “Yeah,” she says, not in the least profound, and winces. “Are you planning on capturing me now? Or will I have a chance to prove it to you?”

Tolvan bites her lip, a fact that makes Aphra jealous because she wishes she was the one doing it instead. It wouldn’t be the first time—so many things weren’t their first anything any longer, though for a time she’d expected them to remain an only once sort of thing, never to be repeated or remarked upon again—but Aphra’s interested in second, third, fifth, and tenth times. So many that she’ll lose count, start to take them for granted. The kisses are more precious than the pulled blasters and that’s a shame. Aphra much prefers the kisses.

She’s a lover first, a fighter second. Well, no. She’s an archaeologist first and a lover second. Fighting is way further down the list of things Aphra is, but for the sake of this conversation, she’s a lover first.

Tolvan sighs and her cheeks now turn the slightest bit pink themselves. Her eyes close and her truly magnificent eyelashes fan across the upward slope of her cheeks. “I don’t want to know what you’re doing here,” she admits, gruff with feigned annoyance and Aphra isn’t sure how she’s learned to tell the difference between genuine annoyance and the pretend version, but she’s grateful, because now she can lower her weapon and holster it. She doesn’t have to make the choice between surviving and seeing Tolvan alive and well on another planet somewhere else in the galaxy, the perpetual thorn in Aphra’s side that Aphra wouldn’t mind being lodged there for good.

She allows herself one single, terrifying moment of imagining them being together, working side-by-side, the Empire and Trip’s gang no obstacle between them.

It’s a good dream.

It’s a dangerous dream.

It’s the kind of dream that makes Aphra want to do foolish things. Like kiss Tolvan again and ask her to stay.

“Why don’t you stay?” she asks and because she makes terrible decisions, she adds, “You don’t need the Empire.” _They don’t need you,_ she doesn’t say, at least. Despite evidence to the contrary, she’s not entirely without sense. “It’d be fun.”

Damn it.

For the briefest moment, though, Tolvan considers it. Really considers it. Aphra can tell. Perhaps it’s only ever been a matter of wearing her down and finally—finally she sees that things would be so much better if she—

“Leave,” Tolvan says, her voice softer than it should be. No Imperial should sound as soft as Tolvan does.

“But I still have to—” Because there are always strings. She can’t go back to Trip empty handed.

Tolvan crosses her arms. She somehow looks even less intimidating and sure of herself than before. “You have six hours to find whatever it is you’re looking for. I didn’t see anything in the meantime. But by then, you better have gone. Do you understand?”

Aphra shouldn’t be surprised, but she is, both by Tolvan’s generosity and the fact that she’d been wrong. Tolvan isn’t capitulating. She’s still the Imperial she always was. It would break Aphra’s heart if she let it, so she doesn’t. She steels herself instead and pretends she doesn’t want to taste the juncture between where Tolvan’s cybernetics end and where her jaw begins. “You’ll be able to find me on Orfalla VI,” she offers. Last ditch.

“I hear there’s an excellent bar on Orfalla VI,” Tolvan replies and maybe…

Maybe Aphra isn’t wrong.

For now, it’s enough. Aphra grins and salutes and she counts her blessings that she hasn’t had to make an awful choice today. “See you, Magna.”

Magna startles at hearing her first name and blushes harder.

Maybe things will turn out okay. Maybe they’ll turn out just fine.

Maybe Magna will find her on Orfalla VI and things will turn out even better than okay or fine.

Aphra doesn’t like to hope, but she’s willing to give it a shot.


End file.
